Wrong number saves dying man's life

With a blood clot threatening his life, a British man reached for the phone and dialed the wrong number—but as wrong numbers go, this was the right one.

Hearing heavy breathing and moaning, the woman who picked up initially believed she was the victim of a prank call. But after Mary Readman, 56, heard the man on the line struggling to hang up, she decided to call back.

"The person was still groaning," she told the Hartlepool Mail. "I asked if they were okay, but they couldn't say anything back to me." Readman called the police, who traced the call, headed to the stranger's house, and knocked down the door.

He was on the floor; they hurried him to the hospital, and the clot was removed from his brain. "If it wasn't for what she did, and when she did it, I might not have pulled through," says Ged Hall, 59, who apparently didn't reach the phone until a day and a half after he experienced a "bizarre 20-second whirring sound" in his head and collapsed, going in and out of consciousness.

Now, "they say I will get completely better within two years—that is down to her." The incident took place last year; Hall and Readman recently met for the first time, the Daily Mail reports.